When dealing with the Marvel Universe cosmos, there are some rather big ideas. This is a universe that deals in Thanos, Celestials, and Living Planets. On the smaller side, The Silver Surfer zips around with a small piece of omniscience known as the Power Cosmic. On the larger, Eternity has been made anthropomorphic and is a living being here.
So is it possible to go too big?
Marvel
Power Man: Timeless seems to have been created to test those limits, giving Luke Cage as many powers as he can have (to truly earn that Power Man name) and setting him against gods and abstractions.
This is a Luke Cage of an alternate future, to be clear, a final Avenger at the end of a rather shiny dystopia, and even before the story starts he’s been powered up. With Hulk blood running through his veins, with the Immortal Iron Fist charging his punches, Luke Cage has tempered his impermeable skin with the power of a thousand exploding suns: he’s taken on Bob Reynolds’ Sentry powers (and his Void).
Marvel
You might think that’s too much, and you might be right, but for the first issue collected in this volume (2023’s Timeless #1) that power level is just right. Up against Khonshu and a twisted version of Moon Knight (with a surprising identity under the mask), Luke needs the overpowered status to effect a sort of meaningless but catharctic change. It’s a perfect dystopian one-shot, a quick glimpse at something unique and over-the-top. Full force fun, one and done.
The trouble comes with the following miniseries, Power Man: Timeless, in which this old Luke finds himself in the main, contemporary Marvel Universe, where he becomes even more powerful. Khonshu already defeated, the book scrambles to find a threat that requires a Bulletproof Sentry Hulk with Martial Arts, let alone the eventual, Celestial-leveled Luke. To do so, it creates a ho-hum Inhuman that we’re told is a universal threat, and asked to accept this with little evidence. Further, a sort of abstract Celestial being looms over the narrative, imposing gravitas through suggested omnipresence.
Marvel
The book struggles under its power, never quite providing tangible stakes and trying very hard to impress upon the reader its largeness, it’s overwhelming scope. In a universe with plenty of cosmic threats, it insists on one-upping anything that’s come before – and in doing so, it undermines its own project: without context, the conflict of Power Man: Timeless becomes largely meaningless. Even the inclusion of Apocalypse (used here as a scale-determining punching bag) does little to support the gravity of the tale.
Ultimately, when the book tips even further into abstract levels of power, the reader is left bored by the implication. There is now an old, godlike Luke Cage floating around the cosmos. A second Iron Fist, a second set of Sentry powers, and a big ol’ Celestial body that we can hope doesn’t come around much for fear of overwhelming the dramatic scale of any story it comes into contact with.
You must be logged in to post a comment.